Essay on My Philosophy of Education

An educational philosophy is a personal statement of a teacher’s goals or belief. A teacher comes to the classroom with a distinctive set of principles and ideals that affect how a student learns and expand the child’s potential in his or her venture into knowledge. I believe that education should be active, and focus on the whole child, rather than just the content or the teacher. The three (3) principles I believe that work harmoniously with my educational philosophy are the teacher acting as a facilitator to foster critical thinking, allowing the child’s natural curiosity to steer his or her learning for personal development, and

For me, the decision to become a teacher is more of a way of life than a career. I have always loved school, practicing at being school marm from a young age, and voraciously devouring every shred of education offered me in my career as a student. If it were possible, I would be a student for the rest of my life. And then I still would not have learned enough. As a teacher, I hope to instill this appetite for knowledge in secondary students. They are, after all, the future leaders of the world, and what better place to expand the minds of the generations to come than here in Appalachia where education programs, especially the sciences, which I plan to teach, are poorly funded and children’s dreams

Education entails individual human development in the cognitive, emotional, creative and social areas. All children are entitled to a free education regardless of race, cultural background or handicaps. For education to be an effective part of the students life, the student and teacher must be actively and enthusiastically involved in learning. A teacher needs to be well prepared and organized. They need to know the perspective goals for each student and ways to achieve these goals. Teachers need to work with students to help them grow and develop ways to use their knowledge.

Today’s society consists of many worldviews. Most people tend to pull beliefs from different religions, but often stick to one main worldview. A worldview to me is the gathering of beliefs that shape what we do on a daily basis and forms our overall view on life. When I look at my beliefs critically, I am able to see my worldview and see how it compares to different worldviews, but also how it compares mainly to the Christian Worldview.

Theories provide the foundation for educational practices, and many of them exist. While I consider my personal theory or philosophy of education to be one that is something of an ever-changing conglomerate of ideas, I realize that some of my guiding principals are directly attributed to well a well established theory.

"Some people make things happen, some watch while things happen, and some wonder ‘what happened?’ Which type of person are you?" author unknown.

Metaphysics is an extensive field that talks about the nature of existence and the reality. Although Metaphysics has Ontology (the study of things that exist in the world) as a subfield, they do not belong to the same field of study. On the other hand, Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the foundations of knowledge more than asking what is real. Epistemology employs diverse methods to formulate arguments that justify and support belief and knowledge claims. Aesthetic, also known as the study of beauty, deals with contemplating the beauty of the human being and everything that surrounds it. Another major branch of philosophy is Ethics, which deals with what is consider to be right and wrong. Ethics also evaluates morality on the basis of human actions and consequences. Additionally, Political philosophy focuses on the nature of law, foundations, and purpose of government. In other words, it analyzes social structures and the legal system in general from a philosophical perspective. At the end, all of this areas of philosophy will be very helpful in ours lives because we are living in a political society where ethical decisions are made by us

Education is inevitable. It is all around us because we can learn from virtually anything. When you are cooking, dancing, talking or any other activity you have actually had to learn several things to be able to do them. In the educational perspective, I am a pragmatist and I tend to follow after Dewey's footsteps. The concept of Pragmatism is one that developed in the 20th century. My philosophy is based on the idea that learning should involve real-life situations. Learning becomes more concrete to a student when they apply it to real-life situations, as where learning things that do not connect to them has more of an abstract sense. Personally, I would have to agree with Dewey when he said, "I

Aristotle once said, “The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.” Teaching enables students to gain the intelligence needed to excel in life. I believe that a teacher’s philosophy of education is a crucial role in his or her approach to leading students on their educated path. A philosophy of education is the set of beliefs that every school and every teacher stand behind. The certain philosophy that one chooses provides the answers to many vital questions, such as the purpose of schooling, a teacher’s role, and what should be taught in the classroom.

In Schommer’s 1997 study, she found that seniors in high school have a more complex view of epistemology (Schommer, M. 1997). Perry’s 1968 study also defends the idea that more education should predict a more complex view of epistemology (Perry, W.G., Jr, 1968). However, it was not clear whether the results would be similar in a university setting. Therefore a test was conducted to find out.

Cosmology- What is the nature of created existence? What led to the development of created existence as we see it?

Philosophy can be divided into Metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysics is concerned with what is to be? While epistemology is concerned with concrete knowledge and with “what is knowledge”? In other words, what can be known, how it came to be known, and the source of knowledge is epistemology. Empiricism and rationalism both deal with the epistemology branch of philosophy. Even more specifically, rationalism and empiricism are concerned with how knowledge is gained.

Education is the process of learning that can take place anywhere and at any time. I believe that creativity and activity as well as books and lessons are essential to the learning process. As a teacher, I hope to instill in the children a sense of knowledge and self-worth that will remain with them throughout their lives.

Epistemology is all about knowledge. It is defined by Bonjour (2002) as “the philosophical study of knowledge; its nature, its requirements and its limitations”. Knowledge is about what you know. How you know what you know is dependent on your perceptions, your views, your reasoning and the reality of it. The first time I came across the question “what is knowledge?” it virtually looks like a simple question that I could easily provide an answer to but in the real sense of it, I realized I was dealing with a complex question which requires a difficult answer. Knowledge is vast but the reality of it is

In the field of education there could arise many philosophical ideas of each individual teacher. Many of the past philosophies have been and still are used in today’s education programs, such as the Socratic method. My philosophy will also contain some of the many philosophies of the past and possibly the future. I will state the nature of students, the nature of knowledge, the purpose of public education, method, and curriculum according to my own philosophies, which also may be based the philosophical ideas of previous individuals.